They settled in Brussels when Stephen's father became responsible for the distribution of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films in Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands.
[2] His youth was mainly dominated by American movies, but he also enjoyed the weekly Spirou magazine with series like Buck Danny or the works of Raymond Macherot.
After Desberg published his first work here, Deligne introduced him to Maurice Tillieux, one of the major authors of Spirou at the time.
He started working for a number of other Spirou authors, including Benn, Pierre Seron, Raymond Macherot and Eric Maltaite (the son of Will).
[2] In the following decade, Desberg started a considerable number of new series with multiple artists and publishers, making him by 2010 one of the major writers of contemporary Franco-Belgian comics.